Present love in “Nettles”

In ‘Nettles’, Vernon the relationship shown is the relationship that is shared between a father and his young 3 year old son who had fallen into a bed of stinging nettles. In ‘The Manhunt’, the poem Simon Armitage writes about the relationship that is shared between a wife and her husband who is an injured soldier who has just returned home from war.

Both of these poets write about and explore the relationships and the sympathetic feeling that is felt by both the narrator of the poem (The father for Nettles, and the wife for The Manhunt) towards the other person in their relationship in the poem.Both poets, Vernon Scannell and Simon Armitage use varied language techniques to describe the pain that the other person in their relationship is feeling and how this other person in this relationship needs to be protected from being hurt. In ‘The Manhunt’, the injured soldier in the poem is being compared to fine china, for example his collar-bone is described as “the damaged, porcelain collar-bone.” To the reader, this shows and emphasises how extreme his injuries really are and how fragile they have made the soldier.

His punctured lung is described as extremely delicate and as if it’s “parachute silk”. This use of imagery show how concerned and tender his wife is for her husband and how she wants to do all she can to protect him.Vernon Scannell also uses the war imagery in ‘Nettles’ as he describes his sons accident. He compares the nettles to weapons and says that they look like “spears” and he later goes on to call them a “regiment”.

The use of imagery that Scannell has used help the reader to understand what the poem is really about, and that is the helplessness of parents trying to always be there to protect their children, when this is not always going to be possible. The father was unable to protect his son from the pain that he experienced from falling into a bed of nettles and how he will be unable to protect him from the pain that life will bring in the future.Both poets, Vernon Scannell and Simon Armitage use frequent rhymes throughout their poems. For example, in ‘The Manhunt’ the couplets are rhyming couplets and with each couplet there is, a new injury that the soldier has is introduced in every couplet. The injuries that the soldier has are a wide variety and these include the scar that the soldier has on his face, the broken jaw the soldier now has and the damaged collar-bone of the soldier. The rhyme scheme helps to contrast with the subject of the soldier’s pain that he’s in and the serious pain that he is feeling.

‘Nettles’ uses a straightforward rhyming scheme when it rhymes every other line. This rhyme scheme in Nettles also helps to contrast with its theme that is of pain and of suffering. Both poems, ‘Nettles’ and ‘The Manhunt’ also have a first person narrating the poems (The father, and the soldier’s wife). This helps for the poems to become a lot more personal and easy to connect and communicate with the audience and it helps the reader more able to understand the characters feelings and the characters emotions.

In both poems, the relationships are presented as loving relationships and caring relationships. For example, in ‘The Manhunt’, the soldier’s wife often repeats the phrase “only then”. This shows the reader that her husband is extremely injured and that his recovery won’t be quick, it will be a long, slow process and that she is going to be there through-out his recovery. The soldier’s wife also talks about looking after her husband, for example she says that she “bind the struts”.

The soldier’s wife in the poem sounds very patient, gentle and loving and she obviously wants to support her husband through-out his long, slow recovery and she wants to help her husband to get better again. In ‘Nettles’, the father also shows a very clear sense of love for his son and the father talks about looking after him until “his pain was not so raw”. In ‘Nettles’, the father sounds angry about his sons injuries whereas in ‘The Manhunt’ the soldier’s wife does not seem angry in the slightest.In ‘Nettles’, after the accident with his son falling in the bed of nettles, the father “slashed in fury” and acted quickly at the nettles to try and get rid of them to prevent his son from being hurt again. However, the father knows that this attempt to get rid of the bed of nettles is pointless as the bed of nettles will only grow back again in the future. This is understandable as it shows that every parent wants to prevent their child from being hurt in any way possible, and will do anything to prevent it.

This also helps for the reader to become more involved with the poems, the characters and the characters emotions and feelings and it helps for the reader to become more sympathetic towards the characters.In ‘The Manhunt’, it talks about the effects of war and what happens to soldier’s after war on real people and their real relationships. The pain of emotion after war is often worse than pain that is physical and this is backed up in ‘Nettles’, for example “unexploded mine”, “buried deep in his mind”. The imagery of the mine sounds very dangerous and like it could go off any minute and explode, and makes the poem more realistic and visual to the reader.

It also shows the reader that the mental state that the soldier is in right now is very unstable. In ‘Nettles’, Vernon Scannell writes about a topic that affects a larger number of people in the world and this is the pain and the sadness that a parent can feel from not being able to protect their children from being hurt in life.Both poets, Vernon Scannell and Simon Armitage represent serious, strong, loving and caring relationships in the poems. Both the soldier’s wife and the young boy’s father feel extremely protective over the other person in their relationship and they both feel like it is their job to protect the other person in their relationship from being hurt. Both characters, the soldier’s wife and the father want to help their loved one by comforting them and soothing their pain as much as they can, any way that they can and they both want to take care of their loved ones and prevent them as much as they can, any way that they can from coming to be hurt futher or being damaged futher.